These Words
by A-Spirit
Summary: If these words could heal... SNARRY. COMPLETE.


**Disclaimer:** The characters and setting belongs to J.K. Rowling.

**Summary:** If these words could heal.

**Pairings:** Severus/Harry

**Rating: PG-13**

**Warning:** Gratuitous angst. OOCness.

**Author's note:** My own frustration in words. I'm afraid this is maddeningly AU, but give it a try.

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**THESE WORDS**

**by: Spirit**

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It hurt to look at his laptop. It really was beginning to symbolize something hateful and spiteful and just about every painful adjective that he could think of at any given moment. Adjectives not being his problem however, got Harry sighing again. _This_ - his eyes swept over his desk taking note of the crumpled papers that he had tried to scratch some semblance of plot upon, and the quill that he had tried to throw across the room but which had just fluttered hopelessly to the ground when he couldn't even find the energy to send it hurtling, and of course there was his very Muggle, very hateful laptop, which was mocking him. This was getting ridiculous.

_My muse is dead_.

Harry dropped his head upon the cold, shiny wood and groaned as loudly and dramatically as he could. Was it possible to lose his mind from frustration, he wondered. This was what he wanted to do. He had felt it ignite somewhere in his soul at some point in his life and he had known that beyond the rubbish with his destiny and the even bigger rubbish of him surviving and surviving again, he was not meant to trap himself in that tiny space in everyone's mind where he could be stroked and revered his whole life. So he had walked away from bloody bodies, crawled through the sand of Hogwart's Quidditch Pitch damn near naked, climbed stairs of stairs and even more stairs, stood on the ledge of the Astronomy tower looking out at the horizon and the setting sun that marked the end of an era, and he had made up his mind. This was what he wanted to do. To live in anonymity, to die in secret, to be as far away from the magical world as he could get and still keep his soul for himself.

When he had written the first book it had just fallen from his fingertips as if it had just been waiting to be told and the story was too strong to keep locked up inside his head. It had been so easy that it was frightening how good it felt to tell a story that no one knew and everyone recognized, for who was one more hero fighting an evil villain, if not just a plot device. His whole life was weaved into the pages and into the paragraphs upon paragraphs that seemed so elaborate to ordinary people. But it had been his life, his fears, his past, his friends, his victory, his dead, his sweat and tears and blood. His words were the only clarity that he could find.

After the fourth book came out he stopped being so surprised by their success. He had just kept on writing and the words he needed flowed like river water from the tip of his very magical quill. Even after the sixth book had been published he was sure that nothing could pluck him from his platform.

How wrong he had been.

He had poured his life and his pain into each book. He had written it all down, and now the river was dry. There was nothing else in his life to write about. So he tried to think up something imaginary, but what was the imaginary compared to the actual life that he had lived, he realized. Nothing came to him now. He would spin out three or five pages and lose interest. And he'd find his mind wondering about the Weasleys and about Hermione, because God, he missed them. They were his only link to that horrifically beautiful world that he had walked away from barefoot one dark night, covered in blood and reeking of magic. He had sworn to never go back, to never give in to the pull of all the untamed magic that coursed through his veins that he wasn't even sure he could control should someone asked him to save them. And he would play God, he knew, because even during the war he had tried to sacrifice himself countless of times. For Ginny. For Neville. For Dumbledore, who had all still been killed. For Draco Malfoy, the beautiful boy with silver eyes that he had so secretly wanted to be his friend until beauty became a price too high to endure for victory and he had killed and killed and just kept killing everyone who stood in his way, telling himself that the deaths were necessary for the greater good and Death Eaters had no souls anyway. Because Voldemort had sucked the beauty out of them like mercurochrome on a wizard canvas.

He had secretly, only in his mind, named them all according to what he imagined Dante's Inferno to be built upon. Even now, he raised his head to glance over at his bookshelf where the six of them were lined out beside his Quidditch trophies and close to the still-moving, still-laughing framed pictures of his parents. 'Little Boy Wonderer', 'Blood Ties and Blood Traitors', 'Licking Icicles In Hades', 'Moonshine', 'The Grasslands' and 'A Year Within A Second'. If he hadn't escaped, if he hadn't written them, he would have fared much worse he knew. It wasn't that they were all bad either. They weren't even all dark. Only those that were about the darkest moments of his life really fed upon the happiness in life, but at the end everything usually worked out rather well. Which was more than he could say about now. Having his muse abandon him was very disturbing. Sort of like being a heroin addict who couldn't get a proper fix.

Harry laughed wryly at that comparison. It was official. He was losing his bloody mind in the worst sodding way.

- - Time for a walk, he mumbled aloud. Maybe I'll get lucky and trip over a rabid plot bunny.

The problem, he admitted, was that he had changed. He was still Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Just-Didn't-Die, but he was also Harry the twenty-three year old author with his own house in Dublin, Ireland now. He barely recognized his own self so he doubted, and secretly, spitefully, needed it to be, that nobody would recognize him anymore. Maybe he looked the same with his glasses and green eyes and toned body, but the scrawny, short ten year old that stepped into Hogwarts was long dead and even the sixteen year old, confused and hate-filled teenager that left, was gone. He had broken himself into tiny atoms, and scratched those pieces into paper, and sold them to the world as fiction. He was as out of character as he could get, stretched so thin that he was barely even still together. And when it had all gotten so bad that he swore each time he cried that he was bleeding on the pages instead, when the words he wrote about Sirius and Cedric and Albus had unravelled him raw, he had kept on writing in memory of them. Even when his fingertips were stained with the color of his blue ink and his laptop's light felt as if it was burning holes into his head, he refused to stop.

- - Severus, he whimpered softly, marching over pebbles on the pavement, wrapping his coat tighter around his body to block out the cold October wind. I think I finally wrote away my insides.

Not that this was a fair thing to say, or even think. Because somehow Severus Snape had searched almost the entire Britain to find that one patch of dirt that Harry had pitched his house and hell upon. And even now it wasn't Severus' fault that he couldn't find words to write anymore, ever since the wizard had walked in his life, fucked him up and walked back out as cool as marmalade on white bread. Snape of course hadn't changed in the few years that Harry had disappeared for, but boy, when he left he seemed to take Harry's air and lungs and heartbeats with him. Snape who hadn't changed had changed into Severus right before Harry's eyes, somewhere between the fifth and the ninth occassion that he had pried the broken wine glasses and the bottles of beer from Harry's hands. And he had convinced him to sober up in that dark chocolate voice that made Harry feel compelled to behave. And he handed him a loaded M16 semi-automatic and walked to the other end of the room and told Potter to take a chunk out of his own head if that's what he was aiming for. And he gathered him in long, pale arms and craddled Harry through tears and gasps that really did hurt coming up and out of his body in the violent way that they did. And somehow, when Harry was sure that he couldn't let go of the quill and he couldn't move away from the computer screen, and he couldn't, just couldn't, stop documenting his fictional life on those empty pieces of paper, Snape had lain him upon silk sheets, stripped him naked and using only the feather end of his quill, told him to remember who Harry Potter was and to remember what it felt like to feel. And that had only lasted a month before Severus had to leave to return to teaching at Hogwarts. And now almost an entire year later, Harry was without a muse, walking in search of inspiration and missing the callous bastard who had stolen his balance and left him with only the very delayed realization that it was possible to fall in love with a traitorous murderer who had always found some way to offer him protection.

-- Sir?

Harry looked up at the waiter who had appeared at his side again after letting him get settled at his window-seat of the little restaurant that he had wandered into. Behind him he could hear a girl and a boy arguing about the finer points of Dublin at twilight. They both had a cockneyed accent, which was so different from Harry's own accent that he listened more to the lilt and lull of their words than the actual sentences. If he could write, he would write about the day he caught Hermione kissing Seamus in Hogsmeade and the lilt in his voice when he had told Harry that Hermione was just helping him to make Padma jealous. It was a lilt that was different from the cool, collected tone that his best friend had relayed this same information in and even more different from the screech of his other best friend's shocked voice when Ron also rounded the corner to save Harry from ever having to keep that particular secret.

He ordered the first good thing on the menu, then spent a few minutes gazing at his napkin in hopes that words would magically inscribe themselves upon the papery surface. When it didn't he lightly traced the outline of his wand that he kept secured in a hidden pocket charmed into the leg on his jeans. It was still there, which was a bit disappointing since it of course meant that magic was not the answer to his writer's block.

- - I need to get out of here. Out of my skin. He mumbled, scratching just those words invisibly into the surface of the napkin. When it couldn't all hold, he pretended to erase it with a quick swipe and started over with smaller letters this time.

It felt like he was apparating, the longer he walked and the deeper he breathed in the night air. The air was cold enough to tear like razors into the lining of his throat. He sniffled and clenched his fingers into fists, refusing to wave his wand about to warm himself. If he was in for a cold it would remind him not to go chasing after bunnies in Autumn. He had this dreadful image of bursting out of his skin like a butterfly from a cocoon. What was even more dreadful was that he spent a few minutes wondering if that could qualify as inspiration. He followed the thread of thought for as long as he could until it unravelled into a ball of yarn hitting the cobwebbed corner of his mind, and he let out a hiss of frustration.

When he got back into the empty space of his living room, he closed his eyes as tightly as he could. His mind was racing with thoughts so quickly that he actually considered pulling them all out one by one and releasing them like feathers into the air. They were useless thoughts. Meaningless. Vexing. None of the ideas made sense, and none of the plots worked and he was suddenly very tired of the circles that were being carved into his brain from thinking so hard and trying so desperately to come up with something useful enough to make sense when he sat down next. His head was beginning to twinge painfully in an obvious warning of an impending headache and it just felt like Voldemort was trying to play a tickle game with him.

- - Hedwig!

The owl was used to having her name hollered by now because she arrived in record time, and landed upon his shoulder. Harry rubbed his cheek against the soft fluff of her feathers, focussing on that one detail and using it as an anchor to reality.

- - Tell him I can't breathe, he whispered to her. Ask him for my muse back. I think he took it up by mistake, and slipped it in the folds of all the black that hides him.

If he could write, Harry wondered if he would be brave enough to write about the way it felt to kneel in mud in the middle of a thunderstorm and dig a hole deep enough to bury Voldemort's remains. There hadn't been much of anything to shove into the shallow hole, but it was enough to mark the death of a great wizard. Evil as he had been, Harry had understood him on a level that no one else ever did and though it had frightened and disgusted him, in the end he had payed his last respects the only way he had been taught how, with tears and magic. He understood the magpie tendencies of Tom, understood the suffocating desire to be loved, understood the seductive feel of being the most powerful being. If Harry could write he would write about the transparent little boy who sat sobbing on the grass while Harry mechanically dug into the earth, who had said his name was Tommy and he missed his mother so much sometimes that his stomach hurt. And Harry had to remember that boy and the teenager with black hair and green eyes, and the man who spoke in hisses. If Harry could write he would write about the parents he started to hate, and the godfather who was too impulsive and insane to know to stay safe, and the guy who never should have taken Cho to the Yule Ball in the first place. But Harry couldn't write because the words wouldn't come and the ones that did come to him were meaningless and half lies and had too much of what he should have done and what he did instead of what he wanted to do. And they were of how he felt committing all those murders, and how he had lost Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived and become this person who was stronger than magic and braver than Griffins and was finally happy with himself instead of trying to make everyone else happy.

Harry tried not to bang his head repetitively into the cool shiny wooden surface of his desk. Instead he kept his eyes shut and his fingertips lightly resting on the keys of his laptop, ready and waiting for divine intervention and the ability to find his words again. But his legs were beginning to fall asleep and it honestly felt like Dumbledore was laughing at him. He was half waiting for Hermione to break the door down and tell him to grow the hell up and for Ron to hit him upside the head and say that he looked like shite, because he deserved both reactions, by now, really. When intervention came though, it was as gentle fingers massaging the pain out of his hunched shoulders and gentle soothing caresses across the tip of one ear and on his cheek.

- - Potter you're worse than a ten year old. There was no kindness in the rough, dark chocolate voice but Harry felt his chest constrict almost painfully. I'd advise you to pry your dignity from off the floor as you seemed to have shed it some three or four hours ago if not disgustingly earlier.

There was no arguing and Harry could barely catch a good breath much less respond, but he tried anyway.

- - I'm alright now.

Fingers tugged at his arm and finally, finally, Harry opened his eyes and raised his head. It felt like he was surfacing from the Great Lake, and he almost gave in to the impulse to suck in a lung full of air before he caught himself. Of course Snape was still glaring at him. But Harry found that he didn't have to search too hard to find the concern that he knew was buried deep within the onyx and asphalt gaze. Those eyes alone gave Harry the strength to rise from his chair to stand before the tall Potions Master, who hadn't changed a bit and yet had changed enough for Harry to ache in all sorts of ways to be near him.

- - Hullo, Harry whispered. He unsuccessfully tried not to shiver when there was no visible reaction from the other man. I can't write anymore.

- - Why do you suppose that is?

Harry considered for about two seconds before he blurted out, I think I was never meant to live long enough to develop any sort of talent. Now I've pissed off the universe.

Snape arched an eyebrow, and Harry lied to himself again by saying that the familiar act was just more evidence to support the theory that Snape was still the same callous bastard that he had been seven years ago. Of course the fact that Harry had to fight back a grin at the expression was evidence to prove that this theory was cutting no ice, at least in Harry's mind.

- - Should I then hazard a guess and say that you have been wallowing in self-pity?

Harry shook his head rather emphatically. The arched eyebrow lowered itself as thin lips curled into a disbelieving frown. But Harry just kept on denying it because it was easier to pretend that he was stronger that he really was, especially to this man who had kissed the robes of avenging angels, looked each of them straight in the eye while lying with a smirk, and had outlived them both. Harry wished that courage like that came in a bottle, labelled 'The Elixir to Life' instead of the kind of courage that he himself seemed to have where he was blinded by fear that was so thick it took everything but adrenaline from him and left him shaking uncontrollably each time he somehow managed to survive one more attack. Snape had once told him that it was the same thing, that Gryffindor courage was the same as Slytherin survival skills. Different names, same man-made luck. Secretly Harry thought there was more to the theory, but then Snape couldn't give all his secrets away and by the middle of the war Harry had just rather prefered that Snape keep them anyway if it meant that the man survived long enough to hold him each time the tremors threatened to tear Harry into strips of paper and ink.

- - Sit down Potter. You look like you're in need of a strong brew.

- - I'm better now, Harry asserted, but all he saw was Snape's retreating back. Still he finished the thought in a whisper. I might have missed you more than I'm allowed to, but I can't keep expecting you to save me from my own insecuruties. Even if I can't help wondering who you turn to when you need to stop shaking too.

The contours in the wood looked like the cinammon in sugar-buns from the odd angle that Harry was trying to examine them at. Still it felt nice to run his fingers back and forth over the cool surface, and better still to hear the scratchy clicks as he did the same thing to his laptop keys. He wondered what his aunt and uncle would say if they saw him now, sitting before a computer with books on his shelves and crumpled up papers by his side, pretending - for surely that was what he was doing - pretending to know anything about writing books. _Obviously I don't_, he wanted to say to them. _Delusions of grandeur never worked for either of you, anyway. But I still can't beleive that I didn't twig sooner_. He couldn't have asked them if he wanted to. They were the first to be killed once Voldimort found out that Harry had left home and he couldn't get anyone to say where the brat had gone.

Harry snickered aloud. He had cried for Tom Riddle but had stood dry eyed at his relatives' grave. Now there was irony.

- - Drink. All of it.

Harry startled a little guiltily. He knew that by now he should have gotten used to the way Snape walked like a ghost. This was yet another thing that he missed though, he admitted to himself. The list of which was getting too long and he still couldn't just get up and wind himself across the taller, leaner body and find himself in the depth of the dark eyes. But Snape would have probably shoved him across the room should he try something like that. Friendship was one thing, but he had overstepped a few well placed lines when he stopped wanting just comfort alone in those arms.

- - Have you at least been sleeping well?

Harry nodded. Stopped. Then he shook his head.

- - Try not at all. I've been trying to write through the block.

Severus scowled again but he didn't say anything. In fact he waited patiently while Harry drained his cup of tea then plucked the empty cup from Harry's fingers and with a wave of his wand silently sent it bobbing along back to the small kitchen, no doubt.

- - Get up.

Harry complied, but really, all the gymnastics was beginning to make his head spin. He said as much in a mumble but being that Snape had excellent hearing it only went so far as to earn himself a darker scowl. After which Snape took his arm and all but dragged him to the sitting room, directing him to the settee. Harry complied again by sitting. When Severus left the room Harry thought that he could actually feel all the energy in his body draining out, but fatigue didn't mean that sleep would come. After trying to keep his eyes closed for about five minutes he finally gave up and lit the fire. The match burned his fingertip and the floo powder threatened to make him sneeze but he always prefered fire calling to owling and he still didn't see Hedwig even though she had obviously managed to get Snape to follow her.

- - Maybe you should take a break, Hermione suggested. When I find my mind wandering, I know I'm getting tired of something so I put it away from a few days and work on something else. Everything looks fresh in a new light.

- - I've done that Hermione, Harry responded softly. It's been four months. I'm not writing anything useful and everything I start is rubbish. I'm just wasting energy and candles trying, especially when I sacrifice time that I could have spent in more productive things. I know that I might as well not start anything, but it's so frustrating not to write. It's all I think about when I'm not trying.

- - Well it doesn't help to get obsessive. I'm sure if you leave it, something will turn up. Harry could see the lines of worry on her pretty features and he felt guilty for marring her in such a way.

- - Maybe I should just take a long vacation, Harry joked with a fake smile. It's probably just seasonal depression and lack of good old vitamin D. I can't tell you the last time I saw the sun properly. It's all just been swallowed up by hazy white stuff these days.

- - Come visit, she suggested gently, but they both knew that she was asking a near impossible of him. Don't you miss doing magic? I can't imagine cutting myself off like you have. I tried not using my magic for a day and it was like going through withdrawal from cocaine. It really hurt and felt like I was itching all over.

In the beginning he had thought that he was going to lose his mind, but he didn't tell her that. If she felt a fraction of what he felt those first three days she would have understood why he had stopped in the first place. Nothing that felt so good to use and hurt so badly to stop could be healthy in any way. Every time he cast a spell it felt like he was controlling the lightening in a thunderstorm, as if each word was ripping its way out of his body. After he had cast the wards upon his house that one and only time, his whole wand arm had gone numb. That was something else that he never shared, would take to his grave, if possible. A part of Harry knew that it only hurt so badly because he hadn't a clue how to tame all the power, but after sitting in a corner drifting in and out of consciousness for five days so as to deny himself of the magic he wasn't about to tap into it again. He knew that he wouldn't be able to stop again, knew that he wouldn't want to even if he could find the right balance to control it. Despite what she might think, he actually had a healthy dose of respect for magic. It wasn't that he had an aversion to it why he had left the wizarding world and stopped actively casting spells. It was the opposite. He had liked the way it felt as it tore its way out of his body, had liked the burn and the gut twisting pleasure that left him gasping. If using magic gave one a stiffy then it was probably best to stay the hell away from it in any case, and until he could properly seperate the dark from the white, he had made up his mind to be a reigning Squib in the meantime.

- - If you plan on remaining comotose for much longer, do tell me so that I can leave you to it.

Harry checked the clock above the fireplace and was surprised to see that he hadn't moved in almost an hour.

- - Did I fall asleep? he asked cautiously. He couldn't remember if he had even told Hermione goodbye. I don't know what's happening to me. I keep blacking out and I could have sworn that I saw Sirius this morning.

He was barely moving his lips to get the words out, because he had learned the first time around that he could really talk total tripe when he went without sleep. I meant to ask, how did you get in here anyway?

- - It's a really strange thing called walking in and out of a room, Potter. Maybe it wouldn't seem so foreign if you actually left this place.

Harry shot Snape a glare. I went out just this evening. I took a walk to clear my head. Besides, that wasn't even what I was on about.

- - Did it help? Snape was still hovering near the settee and it made Harry's neck hurt to look up. I was of the impression that you detesting being away from that wretched writing device for too long.

- - I think better when you're near, Harry let slip.

Severus gave him a long, searching look which made Harry squirm. You need sleep.

- - I need to write.

- - Perhaps you might try doing both. I've heard it said that some of the most elaborate ideas come just as the mind is drifting, Snape responded dryly, holding out a hand that Harry was only too happy to take.

A few minutes later, Harry sat on his bed, playing with the satin cover and looking everywhere but at the man who stood before him. He had already shed as much clothes as he dared in preparation for sleep but since he wasn't tired in that way, he felt a little stupid waiting for Snape to perhaps hand him a sleep potion, dreamless or otherwise. What Snape did was even more shocking. As if it was the most obvious course of action Harry was treated to the sight of a long line of buttons being opened far too tantalizing for his peace of mind. The long dark robe was shed, beneath which was a nicely fitting black trousers and comfortable looking white shirt. They too were shed. Harry had to bite the inside of his cheeks to keep from gasping as milky pale skin was exposed, especially when it came to his realization that Snape had decided to forgo wearing underpants. It seemed a cruel twist of fate that the one time he would have dearly loved to wax poetry, Harry couldn't even find adjectives to describe the acute sense of desire that was filling his mind.

- - Write. Snape commanded soft and low in a honeyed voice that had Harry clutching the sheet to his waist. Unlike you I desire sleep so while I do that, write until fatigue overcomes you.

Harry reached for the ball-point pen that Severus picked up off the nightstand. Write where?

- - Anywhere you might find room or should I put your hand on an appropriate spot?

Harry didn't even wait until Severus was stretched out properly on the bed beside him before he put the pen upon an enticing patch of skin. 'Is this what I want?' he wrote. Followed by 'I don't just think, I feel everything now'. The red of the ink looked like thin streams of blood, so Harry wrote down that word too. He bit his lower lip in concentration and leaned forward a bit as he tried to find the right spot on the thin chest to put his words down. 'Am I in here?' he wondered near the left nipple. He thought up a string of words that seemed to seep from his mind into the pen and he watched as they chased each other all over one hip and down a thigh. That opened the flood gates to more single words and soon he had covered the flat abdomen and was moving upwards over ribs. 'Belt up', he wrote. 'Murderer', because that one just had to be written. 'Immortal', 'magical', 'power', came next. He had to be very careful when he tried to write beneath the Adam's apple, 'made for a wand's tip'. He wrote his parents' names and the names of all the people that he had killed down the left arm and then wrote his name in capital letters at the end. 'I cried' he confessed. 'I tried to kill you back'. The words that followed that were dark and he wondered if he could write magic into them. 'Suffocate-snap-Break-snap-Leave' were the things he had done. He wrote down the darkest thoughts in his mind, of how he had tried to kill himself one night on a hill in Scotland and Ron had patched his wrist up with a Muggle needle and thread. He said he screamed so loudly once he couldn't speak. 'I buried Tom' he scrawled quickly, 'I think he was in love with me'. And 'Hermione told me it was probably the other way around'. 'Sometimes I can't breathe'. 'Sometimes I think a paper cut is deeper than anything a knife can do'. 'I need'. 'I wish'. 'I did my best'. 'Incendio'. 'Silencio'. 'Avada Kedavra'. 'Crucio'.

Harry fell asleep to the pen still writing and writing. Free associating and brainstorming. He smiled and finally let it go so that the dark hazy world could claim him.

The room was quiet when Harry awoke, but he knew immediately that Severus was not sleeping. He opened his eyes and wondered if he could capure the look on Severus' face into words and words and words. Severus was covered in ink and it wasn't just red because at one point Harry had wanted to see what kind of contrast blue and black would give. Harry nodded slowly, when Severus didn't ask permission. Severus understood anyway. His black hair formed a curtain against his face as he twisted his body to decipher the pieces of Harry's soul that had been scratched upon his skin.

He raised an eyebrow in question, as he met Harry's eyes again, tapping the space that marked his heart. Harry ducked his head and blushed. He only seemed to get more and more red as Severus' inspection continued. And he actually groaned and hid his face when Snape's eyes descended.

'Want you. Want this. No, I need.'

'May I please crawl into you?'

'Hurts.'

'I love you...' This written in a tiny script below Severus' navel. '...more than magic.'

- - Potter? Explain them.

Harry shook his head, feeling like a five year, and ducking further under the covers because of that.

- -Don't say no, Harry whispered followed by the mantra he had taken up while writing those desires down, Just let me tell you this.

Severus unearthed him.

- - Explain, he said again. Are they the truth?

Harry smiled, but didn't nod. He rose from the bed, but didn't linger. He got dressed, but didn't stay.

- - Thank you for the inspiration, he said softly instead with his back to the man who he couldn't bear to have deny him. I think I know what to write about now.

The laptop was cold as he cradled it into his bare arms. The keys felt familiar against his fingertips though. He opened a blank page, wrote 'Chapter One' at the top, then let his fingers put down the words that his mind had been having so much trouble forming. He wrote about the things he had been too frightened to say, starting from the parents who had died for him and on to the kindest old man he ever knew. He wrote about magic, and Hogwarts, about Draco and Ron, described Quidditch in painful details and about a mirror that told him his greatest desire. And he wrote about the first time he saw Professor Severus Snape, and the emotions that had festered inside of himself that first day. He wrote his life into the pages as honestly as he could, knowing that the wizards and witches who read it would understand, because this book was for them and in memory of Sirius, and as a tribute to Dumbledore.

When Severus grudgingly handing him toast and tea a few hours later, Harry pried his eyes away from the computer and caught the slim fingers in his own hand. He guided Severus' hand to his still bare chest. Then, trembling slightly from nerves, he traced the words beneath Severus' navel again.

'I love you...'

And meeting his eyes, Severus nodded.

- - You're my muse, Harry said aloud, louder than all his other words. My words are my catharsis.

Turning back to his autobiography he smiled and tried not to look like an idiot as Severus caught a single tear at the corner of his eyes. He picked up where he had left off, typing as fast as he could but still not nearly fast enough to say everything about everything that explained all. But it was enough and it was a start, and he had new inspiration now and a little less fear to have to carry around.

- - My words, he said again to himself this time.

_These words._

o

_**z-FIN-z**_


End file.
